In a meeting headed by the National Director of Customs, José Ignacio Palma, and the presidents of the Customs Chamber, Felipe Serrano, and the National Association of Customs Agents (Anagena), Manuel Lazo, the impact that the Coronavirus is having worldwide was analyzed, as well as the measures that have been implemented to deal with possible problems in exports and imports.
Although representatives of customs agents indicated that there could be difficulties in the issuance of documents by China to be able to withdraw import cargo, such as Certificates of Origin, Chilean Customs explained to them that it had communicated with its Chinese counterparts and that they had informed them that they are being issued normally.
"As a Service, we are closely monitoring the situation and paying close attention to any particular cases that may occur, in order to analyze them and, if necessary, grant the facilities that we had already announced last week: making the delivery of documents more flexible and granting short deadlines so that foreign trade operators can complete the procedures, without affecting the removal of cargo.", explained the National Director of Customs.
Regarding possible delays in the issuance of Bills of Lading, Additional measures are being evaluated to be addressed, which will be coordinated in advance with the respective unions., for which the Service called a meeting this Monday 24 with representatives of the Logistics Association (ALOG), the Maritime and Port Chamber (Camport) and representatives of various shipping companies.
During the meeting with Anagena and the Customs Chamber, which was attended by Technical Deputy Director Gabriela Landeros and General Secretary Patricia Chamorro, other facilitation measures being implemented by the National Customs Service were also discussed, such as the upcoming entry into force of the Electronic Dispatch Folder (CDE), the joint work being carried out to improve the regulations on the Declaration of Value, the upcoming regulations on the Sanctioning System and the BL Exchange.
According to information from the National Customs Service, Chinese ports have made progress towards normalizing their operations, so it has not been necessary to apply contingency measures for exports or imports so far.
This is confirmed by the comparative statistics of operations from China to Chile for the month of January: in 2019, imports amounted to US$ 1.395,7 million and this year these imports totaled US$ 1.339,5 million.
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